And the manifesto continued thus:
“The slightest reduction of the Muslim claims would not only hurt the deepest religions feelings of the Moslems, but would plainly violate the solemn declarations and pledges made or taken by responsible statesmen representing the Allied and Associated Powers at a time when they were most anxious to secure the support of the Moslem peoples and soldiers.”
The anti-Turkish agitation which had been let loose at the end of December, 1919, and had reached its climax about March, 1920, had an immediate repercussion not only in India, where the Caliphate Conference, held at Calcutta, decided to begin a strike on March 19 and boycott British goods, if the agitation for the expulsion of the Turks from Constantinople did not come to an end in England.
At Tunis, on March 11, after a summons had been posted in one of the mosques calling upon the Muslim population to protest against the occupation of Constantinople, a demonstration took place before the Residency. M. Etienne Flandin received a delegation of native students asking him that France should oppose the measures England was about to take. The minister, after stating what reasons might justify the intervention, evaded the question that was put him by declaring that such measures were mere guarantees, and stated that even if France were to take a share in them, the Mussulmans should feel all the more certain that their religious creed would be respected.
The measures that were being contemplated could not but raise much anxiety and indignation among the Moslem populations and might have had disastrous consequences for France in Northern Africa. This was clearly pointed out by M. Bourgeois, President of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, in his report read to the Senate when the conditions of the peace that was going to be enforced on Turkey came under discussion.
“We cannot ignore the deep repercussions which the intended measures in regard to Turkey may have among the 25 million Moslems who live under our rule in Northern Africa. Their reverence and devotion have displayed themselves most strikingly in the course of the war. Nothing must be done to alter these feelings.”
Indeed, as M. Mouktar-el-Farzuk wrote in an article entitled “France, Turkey, and Islam,” printed in the Ikdam, a newspaper of Algiers, on May 7, 1920—
“If the French Moslems fought heroically for France and turned a deaf ear to the seditious proposals of Germany, they still preserve the deepest sympathy for Turkey, and they would be greatly distressed if the outcome of the victory in which they have had a share was the annihilation of the Ottoman Empire.
“That sympathy is generally looked upon in Europe as a manifestation of the so-called Moslem fanaticism or Pan-Islamism. Yet it is nothing of the kind. The so-called Moslem fanaticism is a mere legend whose insanity has been proved by history. Pan-Islamism, too, only exists in the mind of those who imagined its existence. The independent Moslem populations, such as the Persians and the Afghans, are most jealous of their independence, and do not think in the least of becoming the Sultan’s subjects. As to those who live under the dominion of a European Power, they have no wish to rebel against it, and only aim at improving their material and moral condition, and of preserving their personality as a race.
“The true reasons of the Moslems’ sympathy for the Ottoman Empire are historical, religious, and sentimental reasons.”